By Jjagwe Robert
The Paris Olympics have now officially ended and it is time to say thank you to our Athletes that worked so hard to make our country proud. It is also time to answer the questions that must be asked. Our performance at these Olympics is actually one of the Worst in History and a decline from the previous 2020 Tokyo, Japan Olympics.
I have said many times that charity begins at home. If we expect to go and defeat nations that have built permanent training Arenas for nearly all their Sports Federations, then this is exactly why we shall continue to post poor results at the Major Multi National Games like the Olympics and Commonwealth Games.
Having a permanent training hall or Arena for our Athletes is one of the most important basic ingredients of Good Sports Performance. A permanent training hall means that Athletes who want to train to win Medals and Prize Money for the country can do so uninterrupted. They can put in as much time and effort as is needed to perfect their Sporting talents.
Today Uganda has focussed on building stadia because we are hosting the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in 2027. While this is a good development, those stadia are very costly, complex, take time to complete and only God knows whether they will really serve the indoor Sports well enough.
Indoor Sports need their own specialized Arenas such as the BK Arena of Kigali, Rwanda. Such Arenas are nothing like the Football or out door Sports Stadia.
In the recent past I also advised that even if we do not build expensive Indoor Arenas like the Kigali BK Arena, we can build simple Indoor Arenas that cost just about 400 – 600 million Ugx to construct to completion. And these can be done in just about 3 – 6 months.
A Table Tennis (TT) training Arena for example is as simple as erecting walls, a roof and doing the floor. Any large enough warehouse can easily be turned into a TT Arena. So how long and how much do we need to construct warehouses for all our indoor Sports?
We can even decide to have these Sports sharing the halls and then as few as 20 such halls can sort out this nightmare for all the Ugandan Indoor Sports in just about 6 months as we continue to struggle with the gigantic and very costly outdoor (Football) Stadia.
Looking at the just concluded Olympic Games, you will notice that whereas we have 32 Olympic Sports Federations in Uganda, only one (Athletics) won Medals. If you consider all the 51 Sports Federations in Uganda, the situation then looks even worse.
Worse still is that even in Athletics, only the Long Distance runners are winning Medals. There are no medals in any other type of Athletics e.g. 100M, 200M, 800M, 1,500M, Javelin, Discus, Short put, High Jump, Triple Jump, etc.
We must have an honest discussion about this on a round table. We must ask why this is happening repeatedly and what needs to be done.
We have actually never had such a discussion, digest nor analysis after any major Multi National games. This is definitely part of the reasons why we continue to perform like this. And this time, our performance has even gotten worse.
In terms of Training Arenas and the Long distance runners, the first thing you will appreciate is that these runners actually do not really need any specialized facility as much as other Sporting disciplines. Any open space where they can run can easily become their training Arena. This could also explain their good performance while all other Federations are struggling to win medals at these Major Multi National Games.
There are of course other factors hindering our good performance such as lack of salaries or reliable earnings by our National team players and Coaches but the absence of the permanent training halls remains the primary missing ingredient.
Players and their coaches could sacrifice their time and other resources and train hard to become international stars who then start earning good money. But without a dedicated training facility they get stuck and such sacrifice makes little or no impact.
20 indoor Arenas (warehouses) each at a cost of 400 million Ugx would require only 8 billion Ugx to construct and may be another 20 billion to purchase the Land on which to construct them.
Therefore with a total of about 30 billion Ugx all Indoor Sports Federations of Uganda can be sorted out in just about 6 months. Failure by Parliament to allocate such small money but allocate hundreds of billions or even an entire trillion for football or outdoor stadia is really something we all need to rethink and correct.
Why would you decline or overlook solving a problem with less money and in a shorter time in preference for longer term – more expensive solutions?
Further more, those who have attended recent Commonwealth and Olympic Games will confirm that even these are no longer played in the old traditionally constructed Arenas with lots of Cement, bricks and the like. Those games are now played in simple warehouse-like structures, some of which are even dismantled and removed after the games have ended.
On another day I will be happy to explain that indeed these warehouses can be constructed such that they are actually very beautiful and well ventilated or air conditioned to the extent that they can serve both as daily training Arenas as well as holding major competitions comfortably.
If there are key missing elements today in the development of Ugandan Sports, then the first and most important one is lack of permanent training halls or what many call Sports infrastructure.
Our Athletes will never defeat those from other countries that have already solved this problem. We may therefore have to rely on the Long Distance runners for much longer until we wake up and resolve this facilities nightmare.
The Writer is the President of the Uganda Table Tennis Association (UTTA) and Secretary General of the Union of Uganda Sports Federations and Associations (UUSFA)
